


Second Nature

by SpaceAusten (Mama_Hibou)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Character Death, Eventual Major Character Death, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gun Violence, I swear, M/M, Modern AU, Mutant Ben Solo, Mutant Rey, Possible Body Horror, Psychological Trauma, Rated For Violence, Referenced Child Abuse, for now, heavily inspired by marvel, moreso the comics than the movies, some of this will be light-hearted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 02:11:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17520221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mama_Hibou/pseuds/SpaceAusten
Summary: Ben Solo, the son of Senator and renown Mutant Advocate Leia Organa-Solo, has gone missing following the public revelation that his family is directly related to the long-deceased terrorist known as Vader.A robbery gone awry throws Rey's already troubled life into chaos, just as her own powers begin to manifest.





	Second Nature

**Author's Note:**

> _Rey didn’t know or care about what was the cause of mutation. All she knew was that being a mutant meant that you were taken away and never heard from again. That’s what happened to the kids who started showing signs at the group home. Something strange would happen, the caretaker would make a phone call, then you were ‘relocated’._

**Prologue** ****  
****  


((Moodboard by me))

 

Light from the street, passing cars, lamps and neon signs, spilled through the cracks in the worn blinds, bathing the room in a mottled rainbow. Staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep for the odd twisting in her stomach and the hum in the back of her mind, Rey took a deep shuddering breath. There was a wrongness about the air. Her room mates were unbothered by it. The other two girls slept soundly in their bunks.

 

Rey turned over. Her bed creaked in protest. She shut her eyes and told herself to go to sleep.  
  
A minute passed before her hands began to itch. Rey clenched her fists, trying to override the itch by digging her nails into the flesh of her palms. But the itching soon began to burn.   
  
Her eyes flew open when the pain sharpened. With a gasp she brought her hands up to her face.

 

The skin was red and angry, like she was having an allergic reaction. Rey turned one over in morbid fascination. The irritation was the worst along her palms and ended almost abruptly at her wrists. She flexed her fingers slowly, feeling the sensation of pins and needles through the nerves. There wasn’t any swelling or blistering that she could see, but it felt very similar to the time, only a year ago, when hand-foot-and-mouth disease went through the group home like wildfire. Rey hoped this wasn’t another bout. It’d taken her weeks to recover the last time.

 

Faintly, her hands began to glow.

 

Rey choked down a gasp.  
  
_No. No no no no no..._   


She shook her hands, as if doing so would knock off whatever it was that was making them burn. She was grateful that she wasn’t sharing her bunk bed with anyone, as the jostling would surely wake whoever was on the top bunk. When the shaking did nothing but make her knuckles knock together, Rey tried to bury them under her pillow. She took three deep breaths, trying to will them to go back to normal. When she pulled them out again they were glowing even brighter.

 

This was a nightmare.  
  
Mutation was on the rise. Even at thirteen, Rey couldn’t help but pay attention to all of the news reports and speculation on what was causing it. Scientists, doctors, ‘experts’ claimed all sorts of things to be the cause or the catalyst of mutated genes:   
  
_“It’s climate change.”_   
_“Aliens.”_   
_“Hormones in the drinking water.”_   
_“Radiation.”_   
_“Vaccines.”_   
_“It’s hereditary.”_   
  
Rey didn’t know or care about what was the cause of mutation. All she knew was that being a mutant meant that you were taken away and never heard from again. That’s what happened to the kids who started showing signs at the group home. Something strange would happen, the caretaker would make a phone call, then you were ‘relocated’. Rey hadn’t been around long enough to have seen it happen, but some of the older kids liked to talk about it during rec-time between dinner and lights-out.   
  
_“One time, this one kid… I forget his name. It was five years ago… But he like, jumped up a tree. He didn’t climb the tree. He jumped. Next day a big fancy car showed up and took him.”_   
  
_“He got adopted?” Rey asked, confused._   
_  
_“No, dummy. They probably locked him up. That’s what they do with mutants, y’know? Either that or they killed him.”

  
Rey curled up on herself, burying her hands into her stomach. She wanted to cry but she didn’t want the other girls to wake up and see.

 

The group home was the longest-term home Rey had had since becoming a Ward of the State. In the six years she’d been part of the system she’d been shuffled around from place to place within the county. Foster parents keenly took her in (she was cute, bright-eyed and freckled. The picture of a sweet tragic orphan), then after an average of three months, Rey found herself back in the social worker’s office with her backpack full of her meager possessions. She was aggressive - too aggressive. In most cases it was self defense, but nobody seemed to take that into account when an eight year-old broke noses with practiced efficiency when feeling threatened.

 

She didn't even like it here, but the alternatives were much worse.

 

There was a loud crash outside then. The two other girls shot up from their beds, looking as terrified and confused as Rey felt, though for completely different reasons.

 

“Was that a gun?!” Cried Libby, the youngest of them at eleven years, from the top bunk of the other bed. The other girl, Madge, hissed for her to be quiet and threw her blanket off in order to get closer to the window.

 

Libby jumped down from her bed and tried to drag Madge to the floor. “Don't go near the window! What if you get shot!”

 

Rey took the opportunity of their distraction to look down at her hands. The burning and, thankfully, glowing had subsided and was practically unnoticeable. Still, to be safe, she pulled her socks off her feet and stuffed her hands into them before joining the others on the floor.

 

“It wasn't a gun,” she said, though her mind was already jumping to all sorts of terrible scenarios. What if she'd blown something up? What if her mutant powers were to psychically explode things? What if she'd hurt people- what if she'd killed someone!

 

All three of them jumped and screamed when someone started banging on their bedroom door. “Get your asses up, brats!” shouted Ms. Hutt, the group home warden, already thundering down the hallway in order to rouse the rest of the children in her care. “Fire-drill! Back door!”

 

_Fire-drill my ass._   
  
Madge pulled Libby from the floor and started shoving her toward the hall. Rey hung back just long enough to grab her hooded sweater, then jogged after them with her socked hands stuffed deep into her pockets.   
  
There were cop cars lined up across the street, in front of the payday loan office owned by Mrs. Hutt’s brother. Rey was bumped and jostled along as adults shoved through to either evacuate or get closer to the action. The police were shouting at people to stay back behind their perimeter. Rey slipped away easily from the other group home kids, hoping desperately not to draw attention to herself as she got as close as she dared.

 

The front window of the payday loan office was shattered, like someone had thrown a rock through it. More notably, the bulletproof screen that Mr. Hutt always had in place outside of business hours was also utterly ruined.  
  
Rey overheard a nearby officer talk into her radio before turning to her partner to tell him that the special ops were nearly there.   
  
She ducked down behind a postbox when she saw an unmarked black van turn the corner and stop within the perimeter. She had seen those vans before, on the news, whenever a mutant was being apprehended.   
  
Her hands began to itch again.   
  
The back doors of the van burst open and nine operatives filed out, each one dressed head-to-toe in black Kevlar. The last operative, who Rey guessed was the squad leader, was the only one identified by a silver band around their right shoulder. They all carried enormous guns. The spec-ops advanced on the payday loan office and the police fell back to the edge of the perimeter. Every one of Rey’s instincts were screaming for her to run but she was petrified.

 

The squad leader signalled for them to stop. They must have had a mic rigged inside their masked helmet because a deep, feminine voice boomed through an unseen speaker. “This is the MET,” she announced. Rey noticed a nearby cop shift uncomfortably as he watched. The MET operatives didn’t move at all, all standing at attention with their weapons pointing down, but their gloved fingers ready at the triggers. “The building is surrounded. Exit with your hands in front of you.”

 

The itching was becoming more intense as Rey felt panic override her every nerve. She wasn’t in the building. She was hiding behind a mailbox and they had no idea she was there. If she came out they would shoot her. But what if she accidentally blew something up again before that happened? Would it be better if they _did_ shoot her?   
  
Her racing thoughts stopped as soon as a shadowy figure emerged from the blasted-out window. He was tall and broad and he stepped over the rubble with his hands raised in supplication. There was an easy swagger to the way he walked that put Rey even further on edge. Once he was standing in full view beneath the streetlights, Rey saw his smirk beneath several days of scraggly beard and a mess of matted dark hair poke out from the brim of his beat-up old messenger cap. He looked like any one of the vagrants Rey saw in the neighbourhood on any given day.

 

_He_ blew up loan office?   
  
In unison, the MET operatives raised their weapons and pointed them at the man. He said nothing. He didn’t even flinch.

 

“Raise your hands above your head.”  
  
The man lifted his arms higher in compliance, never once looking away from the armed agents in front of him.   
  
“T-t-too much?” He stammered with a chuckle. His voice was rough, either from breathing in the dust or from years of bad habits. “I swear, all I d-d-d-did was knock. Just wanted to see if my p-p-pal Jabba was home.”   
  
The squad leader ignored him and motioned for one of the operatives to put the man in restraints. “Under article Three B of the Federal Mutation Ordinance, you are under arrest. You will be taken into our custody to have your threat level assessed before being relocated to the appropriate containment facility.”   
  
The man - mutant’s shoulders sagged slightly, even as the agent with the restraints grabbed him by the elbow and clapped the first cuff around his wrist. “M’naaw…” he groaned, “I’m no threat, Captain. Honest!”   
  
Rey felt her hands burning again, so hot now that when she pulled them out of her pockets, she could see smoke begin to rise up from the fibers of her socks. She fought down a cry of alarm when the fabric began to smolder and curl inwards like it was melting.

 

Her attention to her hands was ripped away by a man's shout. She looked up in time to see the mutant throw a glowing fist into the chest of the MET agent attempting to restrain him. There was a flash of light, a blast and the smell of burning flesh as the agent was sent backwards, limp, into a pile of brick and broken glass.  
  
Rey’s hands felt like they were on fire. She cried out loudly, ripping the melting socks off her hands before the fabric could fuse to her skin. Nobody heard her. Nobody turned to look.   
  
The MET agents opened fire with a wordless command from their leader. The police followed suit. Rey couldn’t cover her ears with the heat coming from her hands. What did it matter if she went deaf? When the agents found her they would shoot her too.

 

The gunfire was over in mere seconds, and with it the pain in Rey’s fists. She hesitantly looked up. All of the uniformed personnel were rushing around the inside of the perimeter. Rey couldn’t hear what they were saying for the ringing in her ears. She glanced quickly down at her hands, shocked to see that the skin was smooth and pink and completely undamaged and ordinary.

 

The remaining MET agents, with the exception of the squad leader were extracting their fallen comrade as well as the mutant from the debris.

 

The mutant was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is always welcome. Speculation as well.
> 
> I'm not sure how long this AU will be yet. I have the first 4 chapters outlined so far. I know where/when certain things are going to happen. There's also a possibility of an expanded universe because I have NO chill.
> 
> Special thanks to [roamingbadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roamingbadger/pseuds/roamingbadger) for their enthusiasm about this idea. And to my BFF for being a soundboard even though they aren't into SW.


End file.
